UrbanCaffeine

Creator Blog #28 - Update on sponsorship

It’s nice to start the new year with a sponsored video. The video published on January 7 (covering Jackson Heights) was sponsored by italki.

Potential sponsors reach out all the time. Majority of them are not quality leads. Some are even scams or contain some sort of malware.

But when quality inquiries do come in, it’s important to always have a presentation deck ready to send over. My presentation deck contains the following:

• A channel introduction
• The de...
  2023-01-12 15:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post

NYC Blog #30 - Joe’s Shanghai

In case you never go out of your home, the weather in January is FRIGID. And frigid weather calls for warm food. The best thing to eat during this time of year in New York are soup dumplings.

Like everything else, there are so many places to get soup dumplings in the city. A dependable option is Joe’s Shanghai. The restaurant is in Chinatown on Bowery Street. They don’t make reservations and the wait can be up to 45 minutes. But the soup dumplings are so good that this is the only p...

Jackson Heights, Queens

Free Wallpaper - Walkable Community + Culture

First wallpaper of the year!

Creator Blogs #27 - Failed videos

Every post is a datapoint. If a video is successful, there needs to be a debrief on what made it a success so it can be repeated. And if a video flops, a debrief is even more important in order to avoid a pattern of failure.

It’s hard to see a video fail to meet the mark because of all the work and resources poured into that video. So it’s crucial to know why it failed so that time and energy won’t be wasted again in the same way.

If success has subjective definitions from p...

NYC Blog #29 - Standup Comedy

Everyone knows that Broadway shows are intrinsically New York. But so is stand-up comedy. And stand-up comedy in the city comes in all shapes and sizes. They range anywhere from free to $$$.

Free

The free ones are usually hosted by a local community and attendance is around 20 or less people. The attendance will depend on how well the planners advertised the event. The type of comics that perform here are either new and are trying to get their feet wet, or a bit m...

Creator Blog #26 - How long does it take to create a video?

Not all videos share the same amount of time needed to create. But all of them require a substantial amount of time. Here’s the time allowance I give for a typical 6 to 8-minute video.

8-12 hours = script

8-12 hours = create graphics or capture broll

2 hours = voice record and edit

12 -18 hours = assemble and add sound effects

4-6 hours = thumbnail, YouTube details, social media

34-50 hours = total hours per video (6-8 mins long)

NYC Blog #28 - Year's worth of maple syrup

Every year during this time, I make it a point to buy my year supply of maple syrup at a stall in Bryant Park. This is the only time of year I can get these syrups since the vendor doesn’t have a shop in the city.

The “bourbon barrel aged” syrup has a scotch taste to it and does well on French toast and pancakes.

The “smoked and spicy” sounds weird but is surprisingly delicious. It really does have a bit of a kick to it. This goes well with chicken and waffles or with sa...

Happy Holidays!

Not all people celebrate Christmas. But everyone gets a day off. So whether you celebrate or not, I hope you all have a nice day off.

Thank you for being part of the Urban Caffeine journey! Happy holidays!

New York's Cast Iron of Bags

Need an IKEA bag? 

Buy it here: https://amzn.to/3Yp43Zk

(This is an affiliate link meaning I get a commission.)

Free Wallpaper - Dog Bag

Hi all! If there's a size not working for your device, let me know what device it is and I can resize appropriately (feel free to send a screenshot too if you like). Enjoy!

Creator Blog #25 - When is the best time to do anything?

There was a post on Reddit once that said it makes no difference if a person was an early worm or night owl. You gotta do what works for you. As Dan Pink would say, a person is are either a Lark or an Owl. Either way, everyone shares the same energy cycle. You can start out your day at 5am or 5pm, the cycle is still the same.

What the book “When” by Dan Pink has taught me is that there is a certain cycle that we all experience sequentially. It’s a three-phase cycle. Upon starting ...

NYC Blog #27 - The most expensive strawberries

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the House of Showfields in Brooklyn. It’s a shop that carries unique brands in beautiful showroom displays.

I was there for a free strawberry tasting event and ate the most expensive strawberry I’ve ever known. They go for roughly over a dollar each. You can buy a box of 9 for $10 (which is actually a drop in price according to my friend who took me).

These strawberries came from seeds imported from Japan. They were grown hydroponically in a ve...

Creator Blog #24 - How I organize my video and picture files

Today everyone takes pictures and videos. But our phones can only store so much before we run out of memory for all the pictures we take over the years. Some people pay for cloud storage and move their photos and videos online from their phones. For some time, this worked out for me for personal photos and videos. But ever since creating YouTube videos, I’ve septupled the amount of memory I need. And that amount of cloud storage is very expensive.

I’ve since started storing footage ...

NYC Blog #26 - Arepas

I will never turn down arepas. Arepas are generally South American but the ones I find in New York are usually Venezuelan or Colombian. Arepas are made from ground maize or maize meal and stuffed with a variety of ingredients which can be savory or sweet. My favorite arepa is stuffed with sweet plantains and white cheese.

Some places in New York to check out:

Arepas Cafe

My favorite arepas place. Located in Astoria, it’s a small restaurant and a local comm...

My carless holiday

What does a carless holiday look like?

Free Wallpaper - The Great Suburban Maze / Carless

Happy weekend!

Creator Blob #23 - My storyboard process

How do I write for YouTube videos? 

To give some background, I used to work for an ad agency. One of my roles was to be a storyboard artist for commercials. Since storyboards were used to sell ideas to clients and later passed on to another team to film, they were very elaborate and fleshed out. But since I'm not selling an idea to a client and I'm the "team" who would be using my storyboards, I've diluted the process to meet my needs.

Here is the method I developed over the ...

NYC Blog #25 - Museum of the Moving Image

The Museum of the Moving Image is dedicated to film. It’s tucked away in Astoria, Queens. Compared to all the museums in Manhattan, this one is pretty small but fascinating.

It has special sections dedicated to The Walking Dead and Jim Henson's muppets with artifacts from countless classic films. There are exhibits that walk you through the history of cameras, TVs, sound effects, animation, props, and everything else that goes into film production. But my favorite is a set up that sho...

Creator Blog #22 - The Queens Video

Believe it or not, I’m still attempting to finish this video. I've been trying since 2020. I already had the graphics made and all I had to do was put it all together.

What I hadn’t expected was for my computer to not be able to handle the size of the graphics. There’s a function in Adobe Premiere that when I use it, it slows down to a snail’s crawl. (If you are familiar with this software it’s the mask feature.)

So what this means for me is either redo all the graphics ...

New York Blog #24 - How to keep digital books indefinitely

I don’t know if all libraries outside NYC are like this, but one of the best things I like about borrowing digital books from the NY Public Library is that I can keep them beyond the two-week limit… by turning off wifi.

Once I’ve downloaded a borrowed book, I simply turn off the wifi so my Kindle can’t connect to the library and therefore the library can’t “erase” my book. Although the downside to this is that I can’t borrow another book until I turn on the wifi again. 2022-11-29 15:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post

6 FREE things to do in NYC – December 2022 Edition

Have a great holiday season!

Link to video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lKytSwPbL7c

Free Wallpaper - New York Holiday

Have a great holiday season!

Creator Blog #21 - Batching and Automation

The time tested cheat code for productive people is batching and automating. This is how I multiply my time and energy. When possible I batch as much work as I can, then automate its distribution.

Here are some examples of batching and automating.

Social Media

All social media posts are created one day out of the week. All the copy is written out and graphics made. Those that can be scheduled to publish ahead of time (ex. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube commu...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is about being thankful. So I didn't want to let the day go by without saying thank you to you—loyal patrons of Urban Caffeine. You commitment is deeply appreciated. 

I wish you all a great holiday season and here's a toast in your honor. Cheers!🥂

In the picture: Hosting a potluck Thanksgiving back in 2019 (pre-pandemic).

New York Blog #23 - Holiday Traditions

Traditions can be a good thing. Someone once told me that it’s important to have traditions because they are the certainties that we can expect in a world of uncertainty.

The holidays are coming up and I wanted to share some of my New York holiday traditions that I do every year.

Mulled Cider at a Holiday Village

I used to spend Thanksgivings with family in Chicago. Our tradition was to get mulled wine at Daley Plaza at the Christkindlmarket the...

Creator Blog #20 - The Lazarus Heist

A few weeks ago I talked about the importance of having hobbies and interest outside your focus.

I finished reading this last week and I feel that everyone needs to read it too for the sake of personal, national, and international security; and (more accurately) world order.

The book is about the history of North Korea (specifically the Kim dynasty) and its dealings with the world and ultimately how it ended up turning to illegal means to keep its country afloat. Sometimes I forge...

New York Blog #22 - Donuts I can’t seem to get my hands on

There’s this donut place in Queens that I just can’t seem to get any donuts from. They’re always sold you. And at some point, they had an online wait list of about 10,000 people. They open up online orders on Monday at 3pm, then you have to physically pick it up on either a Thursday or Friday. And I can never remember to queue up on Monday.

Kora makes Filipino inspired-donuts. That’s as much as I can say. Once I get my hands on these things, I will definitely update you all if i...

Astoria and the Missing Middle Neighborhood (Queens, NYC)

What is missing middle housing? What does a missing middle neighborhood look like? Find out in this week's video as we visit Astoria.

Free Wallpaper - Zoning!

Happy weekend!